Mexico City electoral institute wants expatriate voters for 2012 mayor election

The electoral institute of the Federal District-Mexico City, IEDF, announced it would work toward allowing residents of Mexico City outside of Mexico - about half a million defeños are estimated to live abroad - to vote in the 2012 election for mayor of Mexico City.

DF will then join Zacatecas and Michoacán in terms of allowing its expatriates to vote on the local executive.

No details were released on exactly how this will be achieved; with the 2006 failure in mind, where only a tiny fraction of those residing abroad (meaning the United States) actually voted - a result that a recent (2010) scholarly work by James McCann, Wayne Cornelius, and David Lea ("Absentee Voting and Transnational Civic Engagement among Mexican Expatriates," in this edited volume) attributed chiefly to high bureaucratic hurdles - clearly the IEDF needs to take proactive steps to make this a real option.

Hubris be thy name: Carla Humphrey, wife of Roberto Gil, rejected as IEDF head

The arrogance of Carla Humphrey finally brought her down: It is now clear that she utterly blew her chances of becoming president of the Instituto Electoral del Distrito Federal (IEDF), the important electoral institute for Mexico City, by accompanying her husband Roberto Gil when he registered to become a candidate for the national presidency of PAN last week. El Universal reports that outgoing President Claudia Zavala, who was elected in 2008 with no possibility of reelection, changed the preference she had declared for Humphrey last week, in favor of Gustavo Anzaldo, who with Zavala's vote got the necessary majority to be the new president of IEDF. 


Whether it was a case hubris or just sheer stupidity is hard to ascertain, but it is a quite remarkable display of arrogance that Carla Astrid Humphrey Jordan didn't think her blatant display of partisanship would not have repercussions, with the added insult to injury that she was not only a member of the electoral institute but moreover sought to be its president. Following Zavala's changed vote, Humphrey angrily declared, 

"Your attitude, councilor Zavala, does not affect me, but weakens the deliberative and decision-making processes of the institute.You, by changing the meaning of the word you gave at a meeting of the council members, vioalte the institutes internal life, its autonomy."

It is quite remarkable to hear Humphrey, whose actions, if elected, would have risked destroying any perception of IEDF's autonomy and impartiality, accuse Zavala of weakening the institute. 

Yet the issue does not stop there: 39 deputies of the Mexico City legislature, from PRD, PRI, PT, PVEM, and PANAL, in a far-to rare display of agreement, presented to the assembly's legislative commission a request to have Humphrey removed as an IEDF legislator all together. 


And PAN?PAN meekly retorted that the other parties were engaging in "machismo." 
It is hard to believe the panistas believe their own charge. Oh, the joys of schadenfreude.